The last thing I remembered was Ricky Montgomery screaming "Kiss my ass you nerd!" Then stomping on a piece of plywood. I realized that I'd died before I figured out how. Apparently, there was a damaged wire left exposed inside the transformer I was sitting on while reading. When the little jerk stomped on the plywood, it caused a chain reaction ending in a bucket of water pouring on me and the transformer. The water reached the wire and set the whole damn thing ablaze before I even realized I was wet. It was a little bit my fault, though. I mean, duh, not really. But the staff at the group home had been telling me pretty much my whole life not to sit on that thing when I'm reading or I'd get electrocuted. But hey, I sat on it my entire life and nothing ever happened, so I figured they were just full of crap. Group home staff: 1 Me: 0 I just hoped that Ricky would be properly traumatized by my death. He was about 10 years younger than me, but he had been an absolute terror since the day his social worker abandoned him there. He deserved a little trauma to help him chill out. My soul or spirit or whatever you wanna call it seemed to hover in the air a few moments after my death, but it wasn't long before I opened my eyes again. Which was weird because I didn't think that was a thing that happened after death. It was my first time dying, though. So, it's not like I knew what was considered proper protocol. Distantly, I heard someone calling the name Lisa Somers. "Lisaaaaaa! They'll be here in under an hour. Get your stuff ready!" Who was coming? God? I sat up from where I was laying and looked around. I wasn't in the group home anymore, nor was I in a hospital bed, but it definitely didn't look like heaven. Unless heaven was a cramped dorm room that was at least 30 years overdue for a remodel. I climbed out of the bottom bunk bed and looked around the room, trying to find hints of what was going on. I passed by a mirror on the back of the door and had to stop and do a double take. Was that me?!? I looked Awful! I ran right up to the mirror and got a good look at myself. Ok, my immediate reaction was a bit dramatic. I actually looked pretty ok despite the big black glasses, but certainly not like myself! For starters, I no longer had short red hair and brown eyes. My hair was long, black, and frizzy as hell. Also, my eyes were a clear dark blue, with only a tear drop mole near my left eye. All my freckles were gone! I was also at least half a foot shorter than I should have been. Who the hell was I?!

The door suddenly swung open and I had to jump back to avoid getting smacked in the face. "Hello? Do you hear me calling you?" A pudgy black man with a buzz cut and a green knit sweater huffed at me. "Uhhh... Sorry, I just woke up," I improvised. Well not really, cause that was kinda the truth. "I said," he repeated, clearly annoyed, "Your bio-parents sent a car and it's going to be here in less than an hour. Make sure you have everything packed and ready." "Okay." I nodded as if I understood what the hell was going on. Bio-parents? They were dead. They died in a car accident when I was just a baby. That's why I grew up in the group home. Wait! He must be talking about the girl in the mirror's parents. He turned around to leave and I saw the back of his sweater. On it were the words Happy Homes Orphanage embroidered in rainbow colored block letters. Wait, why was that so familiar? Oh! My book! The book I was reading! The main character was the biological daughter of the Carlisle Family, a wealthy family in the fictional country's Capitol City. She was brought home by her bio-parents where she was humiliated and treated like dirt by the sister her parents adopted to replace her, and the four older brothers who doted on her. The entire book was the poor main character trying and failing to please her wealthy family and getting ignored, framed, and walked all over instead. In the end, she wound up becoming a famous doctor and finally earning her family's attention and care after saving their lives in a car accident. I remembered reading through it twice because I couldn't believe how stupid the ending was. I assumed I had to have missed some subtext somewhere, but it didn't appear to be the case. The whole thing just kept making me mad because no matter what, the female lead never spoke up or defended herself when it really mattered. She wound up forgiving her family that treated her like trash and all it took was a stupid apology. Not to mention the male lead was a self obsessed jerk who didn't actually like her. He only liked how obsessed with him she was. She had fallen in love with him at first sight, even though he considered himself her adopted sister's fiance at the time. To compete with her, she flattered him everywhere and would bend over backwards for him, just like she did with the rest of her family. Eventually it worked and he dumped the sister and married the female lead. I had only picked the book because the main character had the same name as me and she was also an orphan. The synopsis insisted it had strong family values. As a person who never had a family, I'll admit it intrigued me. I never expected those values to be: People can treat you like dirt and as long as you have the same last name, they should be allowed to get away with it. So, that means after dying I somehow transmigrated into the book I was reading? And now, I was forced to live the life of this body's original owner? Yeah, that's a no for me. There's no way I was going to let that happen. I went back over to the bed I climbed out of and realized that all of my things had been packed already. Great. Now I just needed to get the hell out of here. I grabbed the suitcase handle, but froze as I had a sudden realization. I live in the fictional world of the book now. If this was the beginning of the book, I was only 16, not 20 like in real life. If I ran away, they could just call the police and drag me back anyways. Crap! That meant no matter what, I was going to be stuck with the Carlisle Family. I huffed in frustration, then kicked my suitcase. Ok, ow. That kinda hurt. Not doing that again. I just needed to think. If I could come up with a gameplan of how to survive the next few years without being treated like the original owner, then everything should be fine. I didn't care about winning family affection or even approval. I just wanted to be treated with some damn respect. Ok. Think think think...

The main obstacles would be the adopted sister, my fourth brother, the adopted sister, school, the adopted sister, money, and the adopted sister. Those were the main things that caused trouble and disagreements in the house. But, a lot of it was also caused by misunderstandings that the original owner for some reason refused to speak up about. For example, for years they looked down on her for being a poor country bumpkin with only shabby clothes and hand-me-downs. But her parents were rich and her siblings had tons of money. They simply never gave her any. And she didn't try to fight them or insist either. In fact, she did the opposite. She worked so hard she barely had any spare time, just to be able to afford her tuition and the cheap clothes she got at the flea market. They also called her ugly because of her frizzy hair and glasses. I went back to the mirror, taking another look at the original owner's body. She was skinny. Not quite emaciated yet, but she would definitely look better with about ten more pounds. That could come in time. Her hair might have been a problem though. I suddenly remembered a tik tok video I'd seen years ago about a girl who said she always thought she had frizzy hair, but it was actually just curly and she never knew, always brushing out the curls. I wonder... I searched around the room and saw a door that led to a bathroom with a shower and a linen closet full of towels. I had to dig through a few more cabinets, but I finally found a lonely comb, shampoo, some leave-in conditioner, and a blow dryer. I washed my hair in the sink and low and behold, it was indeed curly. Maybe more like waves, or somewhere in between a wave and a curl. I tried to do the same as the girl in the video with my limited time and supplies and it didn't turn out so bad. It would look better with the proper products, but my hair actually had distinct curls and not just frizz. It was a definite upgrade to my looks. That was one thing off the list. The next thing was the glasses. I took them off when I washed my hair and had to scoff. My vision was exactly the same. The prescription had obviously been outdated because my vision was not 20/20 with them on, but I didn't expect them to actually be useless. I could still see well enough, so I just chucked them into the bin. It might become a problem at school, but I had rich parents now. I wasn't going to be meek like the original owner. If they're just going to treat me like crap anyways, the least I could do was milk them for all they were worth before I turned eighteen and ran for the hills. Doing my hair had taken longer than I expected and by the time it was fully dry, my ride had been waiting. I grabbed my suitcase and got in without ceremony. I recalled that the original owner had no friends at the orphanage after being bullied for years. Even the director hadn't really liked her. So there was no reason to be sentimental. Aside from the driver, I was alone in the back of the luxury van. So I spent my time playing with all the different functions of the seat until it had me laying back in massage mode and it lulled me to sleep.